Bringing joy to community resilience

We recently organised an event called Celebrating Resilient Communities, in the town of Ashby, which consisted of an afternoon of music, food and activities, to thank all emergency personnel and volunteers, and celebrate the resilience of the community.

The event also included a wonderful Welcome to Country from Auntie Lenore, wellbeing activities such as sound bath, chair yoga, nature mandalas, a ‘walk and talk’ activity with a GP with mental health training, and a positive future-oriented workshop with Amanda Forbes (Northern NSW LHD).

Leading to the event, we also ran a ‘best Ashby Letterbox’ competition, and developed, designed and printed a booklet for Ashby, packed with useful information about preparing for and responding/recovering from extreme weather-related events as well as food security information and interesting Ashby history.

One of the project's key learning is it is clear that bringing people together for a joyful celebration of the community is an absolutely essential aspect of building community resilience. For this, we are deeply grateful to Healthy North coast for funding this project.

In late 2019, the Ashby community was severely affected by smoke from the nearby Shark Creek fire and then directly impacted by several wildfires. In particular, the Myall Creek Road fire “which had been approaching for over a month was frightening and devastating” (Barbara Winters, community member), meant most of the Ashby area was evacuated. For weeks fire crews battled to save homes under extremely tough conditions. Many buildings, essential infrastructure, vehicles, and precious native flora and fauna were destroyed.

Then in 2022, the little town was isolated twice by the floods for several days, which also directly affected some residents. Food had to be delivered by helicopter during this time.

Organising the event itself proved challenging, as it had been postponed three times - twice because of Covide and once because of the floods.

Needless to say that having the community finally come together for this event proved a relief. This event was primarily about social connection and certainly achieved its aim to strengthen connections and build supportive relationships. Many had not met since Covid-19 hit the region and the event was described as a celebration of finally coming together again.

Beyond the organisation of this event, this pilot project convinced us of the necessity to organise regular celebratory get-togethers as part of community resilience-building. Expect to see us more on dancefloors!